B2B social networking tools come of age

Earlier this year, Cisco published the results of social networking survey of 100 companies in 20 countries. The researchers looked at which tools are being used, which areas of business are adopting them and how they’re putting them to use, and some of the challenges that are arising.

They found that social networking tools are not just being used by marketing and communications professionals to engage with the customer or end user, but also to collaborate more effectively internally and with business partners.

Nick Earle, senior vice president, Cisco Services, observes that:

"The rise of the connected consumer is driving a market shift in the enterprise, creating "people-powered business" where social networking tools and collaborative technologies are the propeller of the next-generation of productivity and bringing about a fundamentally different leadership model."

The study’s well worth a read.

LinkedIn springs to mind as the most effective social network in the business world today. The network effect encourages people to join a site that has the most members and LinkedIn seems to have no real competition here.

LinkedIn Groups has helped the service move beyond being just a place to find a contact in a specific organisation and introduced the social element that had been missing. A lot of people are using the platform to get advice from their extended network on business questions, manage invites to industry events and search for jobs.

Beyond this, Yammer is becoming increasingly popular as an enterprise social networking tool. Once you have created an account by registering an official email account, featuring company’s domain name any person joining with the same email domain name will be entered into the main group by default. It provides a single platform for microblogging, direct messaging, file sharing, tagging content and creating a fully searchable knowledge base.

Collaboration software has been around for a decade or more but with social networking tools it will become much easier to problem solve, knowledge share as well as increasing productivity and innovation.